


love like an english rose

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Series: in the days that follow (i will) [3]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Multi, Who Needs Teeth?, Who's to say?, for the aesthetic, guys i really don’t even know, just some sweet stuff, soft kiddos in a bad situation, tags and rating might change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: the weather here’s hardly sunnybut don’t fret my darling girlyou needn’t worry, funny honeywhen there’s solace in each spun gold curl





	love like an english rose

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So I don’t really have much to say for myself, but this is a Dr.Spellman/Hildbert thing that I did for this series. It works out best if ya read the rest of ‘em too.  
> (Sorry. Also, sorry about these summaries, I cannot explain why they keep occurring this way.)  
> Basically the plan is to do chapter updates in chronological order with the other pieces as they correlate with _and she will become the phoenix (with a new dawn burning at the edges of her wings)_ , so it’s gonna be a little adventure for all of us.
> 
> Hrngh, let’s see what happens!

Hilda doesn’t know what she’s doing. Not really.

The first time she tried this, she was fourteen. Alone in a shared bedroom while Zelda raised hell away from home, the thought of what her older sister was up to inside the Academy’s walls making her sick to her stomach.

But here she is again, feeling like a child. Still so inexperienced, clumsy and hesitant at Zelda’s vanity, assorted cosmetic concoctions laid out before her.

Make-up is something of a challenge for her. When they were small, and Zelda had perched beside their mother’s in the mirror, learning techniques for glowing rouge and elegant brushstrokes, little Hildie had stumbled through the background, two left feet deep inside a pair of Mother’s high heels, body afloat in an ocean of dazzling dress-up fabric. She was Zelda’s practice model, her guinea pig for the most outrageous and jarring of color schemes.

Ever the daughter with scraped knees and muddied cheeks, her mother’s staunch elegance never quite took. Hilda was too wide-eyed. The Spellman sisters’ faces were canvases, but where Zelda was an impression of Mother’s careful, pious traditionalism, Hilda became an explosively expressive abstraction, misunderstood in her lines and love. She lived and breathed on many pages, flipped and thumbed through, while her beautiful big sister was mounted in an ornate frame and nailed to the parlor wall.

Even now, she was the same. Homemaking is a messier business than Mother ever would have had them believe. She gardens with dirt under her nails and tends what could have been Hildablooms, without the Cain Pit and a fickle, fretful Zelda. She’s grown comfortable in soil and often wonders what sort of flower she’d be. Sometimes when she’s buried, she thinks about staying dead and nurturing new seeds.

But she’s not in the earth tonight. She hasn’t been in some time. Zelda’s been too busy to bother with it. Or too fragile to be without her.

Who can say anymore, when she’s constantly cloistered in that damned study?

She has a date tonight.

Cee planned it, surprising her when he stopped by the previous night at dinner. Zelda’s abject absence has given her free range over a freshly full household, which is empowering and daunting all at once, and she’s so glad he’s stood by her through what have to be the topsy-turviest months of her entire life. Rather than falling into the multitude of mouths she had to feed, he slipped behind her in the kitchen, softly kissing her cheek as he set to work at her side. The house is far from empty, and Zelda will always need her—perhaps now and going forward more than ever—but Cee has truly built a home for himself in her heart.

He even tried to bake for her. A basket waited on the kitchen table when the children cleared out, and it was full of heart-shaped, half-burnt peanut butter cookies. Her favorite. He smiled sheepishly and squeezed her hand, insisting she was under no obligation to eat the wretched things. She laughed and promised him baking lessons.

She’ll find time for them somewhere.

He’s so gentle, so thoughtful, so sweet, and he deserves all of her. All her time, her energy, her attention. But when they’re together, she just wants to curl up in his arms for a while.

She loves him and her work, but, _Balthasar’s beak_ , she’s tired.

Distracted, the thin brush slips from between her fingers, and pigmented powder smears across her nose. She sighs, frustrated, and carefully wipes it all away, gazing at herself, bare-faced, in the mirror.

Tiny bouquets of wrinkles have sprung up at the corners of her eyes and mouth. They’re from smiling and laughter, scars of aging joy, and she’s struck by her own embarrassment. Hilda’s never been the type to put stock in appearances. As long as one is happy, nothing else should matter. She’s a strong believer in the value of internal beauty. She’s had to be, being Zelda’s sister.

Everyone says she lives in Zelda’s shadow, but she likes to think of herself shining under a different sort of light. If Zelda is like the sun—brilliant and blinding, playing with fire—maybe Hilda is the moon. A soft glow, a gentle reflection. Ever changing and quiet, lighting the night, the solitary witness to desert flowers. They need each other to stay balanced.

What would one be without the other?

They’ve learned the answer to that question a hundred times, a hundred ways, but the conclusion always reunites them, like tides to the shore.

She can hear Cee’s voice downstairs, hesitant and almost shy, despite all the nights he’s spent there, amongst her coven or between the sheets of the fastidiously made up bed behind her.

Her reflection isn’t nearly so embellished, and this isn’t how she wants to spend her time. So she casts a simple glamor and sweeps her purse off her dresser. It won’t last, but she’s fed up and no longer a child. She can’t call on her sister’s steady hand, can’t make herself a masterpiece.

After everything they’ve been through, she doesn’t think it matters.

This is no schoolyard romance, no teenage dream. She wished for that a lifetime ago, when she was just Zelda Spellman’s silly little sister, and she wanted nothing more than someone who wanted her too, who would prefer stargazing to sunshine.

She arrives at the top of the stairs, and he looks at her like she is the night sky, infinite and sparkling with constellations. But it’s just her. Just Hilda, and he sees her with a dazzling moonlight smile, like she’s dripping celestial diamonds.

No childhood sweetheart could give her this.

So she skips the rest of the way and flies up onto her toes to kiss the corner of his mouth.

It’s delicate, diaphanous. He smells like vanilla and oranges, the cologne he found in the back of an apothecary she took him to before the coven’s Ostara feast. It’s so innocent and pure, like Queen Anne’s lace and the sugar cubes he keeps under the shop counter for her afternoon tea.

And it’s not what he wants.

Her happy heartbeat falters at the pull of his psyche. He wants battling tongues and fiery touches and devotions in the dark. He wants black cherry tang on his tongue and everything her sauciest novels outlined without providing steady scaffolding.

But she’s read enough, and she’s brave enough, and she is enough to do this. Since it’s what he wants. _That’s_ enough.

She’s taken him upstairs plenty of times, probably more than her roommate appreciates, but her turn as the promiscuous, ravished sister is long overdue. She should make the most of it before Zelda’s next paramour saunters along.

Shouldn’t she?

What about her nice, quiet evening with her boyfriend?

Even the name would earn her ridicule. Maybe she hasn’t grown out of childishness. She’s never denied being a hopeless romantic, but Cee’s made her a hope _ful_ one. She doesn’t want to give that up just yet. They have fun, sure, but the true connection between them is cerebral, based in wit and timing and care, not the leather and sweat seeping from his subconscious.

But she loves him. And if she loves him…

Hilda takes his hand, rough at its new place low on her waist, and suddenly they’re at the first landing. He likes it when she leads, so she pins him to the banister and kisses him how he wants her to.

He stops her, bracing her back, their bodies pulled apart like a plucked petal and its daisy. His hands are big, and his palms are soft against her cheeks as he seeks her eyes.

“Hildie,” he teases with pine and pleasantness in his throat, “If we keep this up, we will be deplorably late.” The smile in his voice makes her bite her lip, swallowing her uncertainty.

“I want to be everything you want.”

He squints, confused. “You are.”

She shuffles, scolded by his blatant denial. “That isn’t what you’re thinking.”

He’s encountered her psychic power a few times since they’ve been together. Fascinated by it, he’s peppered her with questions, about that, and every other manifestation of her powers. He knows some theory, growing up with Greendale lore and legends, but practical application still stuns him speechless. And, apart from containing his demon, she’s never had cause or inclination to use it on him.

_His demon._

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage, Ms.Spellman.” He keeps his voice low, aware of the heightened potential for eavesdropping in a crowded house. “But surely you know that all I want is you.”

She can’t help it: She giggles.

And they compromise, meeting in the middle so the syrupy sweetness of his assurances mingles with the peach gloss on her lips. He helps her into her coat, and they step out into March’s early evening chill, cool dew on her skin and warm fingers laced with hers making her feel young and bright as a silver shooting star.

**Author's Note:**

> I should be able to write more this week, so prepare for some more updates and such(?).  
> Let me know what you thought, leave me a prompt, do what you want.  
> *insert dancing shrug emoticon*  
> Anyway, thank you for reading it, you’re lovely humans, and I suppose I shall see you around. I’ll stop now.
> 
> Love, Ruby


End file.
